From Dec. 27, 2001 to Dec. 29, 2001 once again the legendary (well, at least
for power failures and lame organizing) "The Party" took place in Aars,
Denmark. To draw a conclusion: This one was definately the last TP I
visited.

In the beginning, everything started very relaxed: Weasel/G*P organized a
bus trip to the partyplace again, so the journey was completely
uncomplaining. Once again the totally mad guys from Swizerland, Robocop/ATL
and Racer spent the night before the trip at my place. We had lots of fun,
enjoying Swiss delicacies, boozing and a C64, PC or VCR running in the
background all the time. So we went to the bus with a terrible hangover the
next morning, just to find out we had the very same bus drivers who made
some bad experiences with me the last years. 8-)

Anyway, the bus trip was cool. The weather was fine, DeeKay/Crest showed off
with his new iBook, and when we reached the city of Hamburg, I was so drunk
I slept for the rest of the journey, as usually.

When we arrived in Aars, I thought we accidentally got to Siberia.
Confoundedly cold and really a lot of snow. The hall was already crowded
with people, but I really wasn't drooled over that. There were almost solely
12- to 17-year-old Counterstrike-Kiddies. Among the (estimated) 2,000
computers I catched sight of the overwhelming number of 4 (in letters: FOUR)
C64s, three of them brought by guys from our bus, by DeeKay/Crest,
Eyesee/Anubis and my humble self. I think the fourth one was brought by
AEG/Smash Designs. The other machines were mostly PCs running Counterstrike
or Quake. This motivated me and Eyesee/Anubis not to contribute our entries
to the C64 graphics competition (although there was breathtakingly first
price of 15.00 Euro!) at TP, but to release them at Mekka&Symposium. So I
decided to beat up the other C64 people in IK+ Gold. It was great,
unfortunately I embarrassingly failed in Thrust, again. We should have
played Commando.

Of course, the whole schedule of the party was delayed, again, but not as
much as the years before. Also, the usual power failure (only on the stage
this time) just took about 45 minutes. Many compos had been canceled,
anyway, so they had enough time for some "great" Counterstrike and Quake
competitions. The event was sponsored by Asus (pronounced: Asses), which was
pointed out every five minutes. For example, there was an "Asus Flash
Competition", in which you had the great opportunity to create advertisement
flicks for them free of charge. As I said before, the first price in the C64
Demo competition was 15.00 Euros. And, of course, a copy of "Anarchy Online"
(which you got for any shit, by the way), which seems to sell so bad they
have to give it away for free. For comparison only: The first price in the
Asses Flash compo was 500.00 Euros and a whole lot of hardware (mainboard,
GeForce3 and 24X CD writer), the winning animation could be clicked together
within 2 hours, even if you only have rudimentary skills in Flash. Hadn't
even ActionScript in it.

Most of the compo entries were pretty poor, except for 2 really nice entries
in the PC Demo (Stop! They just called it Demo competition, as there were no
seperate compos for PC and Amiga! Saved precious time for Counterstrike this
way, exactly like holding just a single music compo, in which our good old
SID had to perform next to PCs...) competition, and watching the winning
demo of the Wild compo shows you what happens if someone, who has no skills
in modelling and animation uses a nurbs modeller. As I said before, there
almost were no sceners who would have noticed, only about 1/4 of hall 1
wasn't occupied by people not playing Quake or leechin pr0n (ehrm... *g*).
Because of the compos being so lame and nicely scheduled - C64 Demo compo at
4am - we had lots of time playing on the C64 (doing something productive
would have meant to cast pearls before swine). The network didn't really
work (guess it was optimized for playing deathmatches), and many people
obviously feared another bust, so there was only pr0n to leech. There was
not much else to do, as the 18- to 20-years-old security guys (equipped with
cable ties as handcuffs and Maglite(tm) flashlights as persuaders) prevented
any fun (e.g. consuming alcohol). Guess they'd have gotten ahead in the
Gestapo.

At least there was *one* highlight at TP: The live performance by "Press
Play on Tape", even Weasel/G*P danced like a howling dervish. The band
improved quite nicely and released a great album, "Loading Ready Run", which
has was sold right after the concert, but obviously didn't sell too well
because of the lack of post-adolescence visitors.

I don't think I have to draw conclusions here. Three scene parties each year
(Comparade, Mekka&Symposium and X) are enough, so I don't have to waste my
precious time travelling 1,000 miles to visit a LAN party. I'm just sorry
for Heavyhead, whose attempts to hold a "real" scene party were without
success among the organizers. He didn't say *a single word* about this
year's TP, by the way.

The trip back home was quite uncomplicated, too, although we lost
Zounds/Matrix at a gas station... But we got him back in one piece! 8-)
A final word: I had more fun playing "Scramble" on my Vectrex together with
the Swiss guys after returning to Munich than at the whole TP...